A White House Story Reveals Shifting Stance on Tax Cuts for the Rich

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivers remarks to the press on October 30, 2017, inside the James S. Brady Briefing Room.CreditTom Brenner/The New York Times

By Jim Tankersley

Oct. 30, 2017

On Monday, as news about the indictment of President Trump’s former campaign manager dominated the headlines, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, took to the podium to tell a story about journalists, bar tabs and discount beer.

The story, told at the White House press briefing, was meant to illustrate the realities of America’s progressive tax system. Instead, Ms. Sanders’ tale appears to conflict with another story that President Trump likes to tell: the one about how he’s not interested in cutting taxes for the rich.

Earlier this month, in a meeting with members of the Senate Finance Committee, Mr. Trump repeated his oft-told anecdote of a chat he had with his good friend Robert Kraft, the wealthy owner of the New England Patriots, in which Mr. Kraft implored him to cut taxes for the middle class but not the rich. Mr. Trump agreed with that notion, Democrats who attended the meeting said, and declared that his coming tax bill would be focused on the middle class and not on rich people like Mr. Trump.

On Monday, though, Ms. Sanders opened her press briefing with a story that, at its core, is a defense of cutting taxes on high earners because they pay a greater share of taxes than those on the lower end of the income scale.

The story focuses on 10 reporters who go out drinking every night, always spending $100. (If those reporters live in Washington, they could each afford a Corona, plus tax, at the Trump International Hotel.)

The reporters correspond to taxpayers across the American income distribution, and their division of the night’s tab, in Ms. Sanders’ telling, corresponds to the breakdown in who pays income taxes in the United States. The poorest reporters pay no tab at all. The middle pay a little. The richest foot most of the bill.

“The 10 reporters drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement,” Ms. Sanders said, in a metaphorical break from the administration’s case that Americans are dissatisfied with the current tax code, “until one day, the bar owner threw them a curveball. ‘Since you’re all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.’ Drinks for the 10 reporters would now cost just $80.”

Long story short, the “fair” way, in the story, to apportion that $20 discount would be to give most of it to the richest reporters, who were paying the most for drinks in the first place. That, in turn, would make the poorest reporters angry that they saved less than the richest ones.

“The nine reporters yelled at the tenth and made him feel bad,” Ms. Sanders said. “So the next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, and the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They no longer had enough money between them all to even cover half of the bill.”

She concluded: “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally benefit from a tax reduction, but not the largest percent benefit. Taxing them too much — attack them — and they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.”

Never mind that Ms. Sanders seems to be making the case that rich Americans — these are personal taxes we are talking about, after all — might flee the country if the middle class gets a tax cut and they don’t. The point here is that the Trump administration is shifting away from the president’s own words. They’re not saying the rich shouldn’t get any tax relief — they’re saying the rich deserve to get one.

Mr. Trump famously does not drink. But that rhetorical shift might draw a toast from supply side conservatives, who have long argued that cuts at the top end are both deserved and necessary for economic growth, and some bottle smashing from Democrats, who have long criticized the president for saying one thing on taxes and proposing plans that do something quite different.